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Stephen Kruiser:
“…Seriously, the dude looks like he’s got a ferret in his pants. Americans aren’t going to be moved by a political assault that’s being led by an intergalactic visitor from the planet Freak Eye…”
CHARLIE MARTIN:
“…we were talking about Eric Ciaramella who was fired from the White House staff because he was leaking confidential information to the media. According to all the sources, he then returned to the CIA, where he currently works.
Which is, frankly, odd.
How, exactly, do you lose a job for security violations and return to the CIA? One would normally lose one’s clearance, and even janitors and cafeteria workers at CIA are cleared.
Then there’s LTC Alex Vindman, NSC staffer and active-duty Army officer. He has testified that he disobeyed orders, advised foreign governments to resist Trump, leaked internal information to others, and was actively working to subvert the president’s foreign policy.
Now, Gods know I’m not a UCMJ lawyer, but if you look at the Uniform Code of Military Justice, that sounds like an Article 88 (Contempt to officials), Article 92 (Failure to obey order), and Article 133 (Conduct unbecoming an officer). There’s an argument to be made for Article 94 (Mutiny) as well.
So this too is odd. Normally, under these circumstances, a serving officer would at least be relieved and very possibly confined awaiting court-martial…”
Karin McQuillan:
“…It’s hard to think of a major Democrat issue and proposed solution that is not a fake. It’s an emergency. What’s the emergency? Everything. The planet, white privilege, transgender rights, Nazi policies on the border, killer cops. A health care crisis so dire the government must ban private insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals.
Most of all President Trump is a walking emergency. His voters are hate-filled bigots who love his authoritarian tendencies. They are a danger to our democracy.
Democrat fixes are a list of economic and physical impossibilities. Ban oil, gas, and coal; make health care and college “free”; hand out reparations for slavery. They promise they will raise all the money from billionaires’ spare change…”
James Piereson:
“…Now they propose to impeach the President on the basis of testimony from a cia plant in the White House, Democratic partisan, member of the Obama administration, and friend and ally to former Vice President Biden, who heard third- or fourth-hand about the President’s call with the President of Ukraine, and then worked hand-in-glove with Rep. Schiff to concoct a “whistleblower” complaint that he proposes to use as a basis for impeachment. The phone call in question took place the day after Robert Mueller’s embarrassing congressional testimony about his “Russia” investigation. Plainly some Democrats concluded, once Mueller’s testimony sunk in, that “we have to make another run at this guy.” The “whistleblower” complaint followed as night the day.
This gambit is never going to fly with Republicans or with Republican-leaning voters. It is plainly absurd, and a desperate follow-up to the failed Russia investigation. Still, they are determined to proceed—and no doubt will get a majority of the House to vote for impeachment, because they decided long ago that this might be the only way they can get rid of a President they despise. This is a measure of their faith in American voters.
In a time of norm-breaking, Democrats are breaking new ground on impeachment: they are using impeachment as a campaign strategy to weaken President Trump in the hope they can elect a Democrat to the presidency next November. They also think that by impeaching him they will discredit his election victory in 2016. This is also a piece of their campaign strategy: he never should have been elected in the first place.
Say what you will about impeachment, that it will always be political and not narrowly legal in nature—it has never been deployed as a feature of an election strategy, or as a means of reversing an election result. This is a new step, and one that will only reinforce partisan polarization that has already crossed beyond the limits of rationality. In the annals of cynicism and norm-breaking, this scheme deserves a prominent place…”
Michael Goodwin:
“…If Schiff, the zealous California chair of the intelligence panel, has a compelling vision about how to persuade the public that the president committed crimes or anything approaching crimes involving Ukraine, it escapes me. The first day of hearings and the first witnesses should have at least been able to produce facts and tantalizing hints that would leave viewers wanting more.
Instead, the performances of acting Ukraine Ambassador William Taylor and State Department official George Kent left the impression there is little or nothing more to want. Everything to come likely will offer only more detail about the things we already know.As several GOP members argued, it is impossible to prove the allegations of a quid pro quo when Ukraine got the American aid even though it never promised to investigate that country’s role in the 2016 election or the hiring of Hunter Biden by an energy company for $50,000 a month when his father was vice president.
That idea was captured best when Ohio Republican Jim Jordan got Taylor to acknowledge he had three meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over a 55-day period after the Trump phone call. Not once, Jordan said and Taylor agreed, did Zelensky complain that Trump was pressuring him to do the investigation or that there had been a holdup in aid.
“And you’re the star witnesses,” Jordan said, which got a laugh out of Taylor and many in the room.
It was a compelling moment that underscored the difficulty — and maybe the insanity — of what Democrats are trying to do. Moreover, even if they could prove a quid pro quo, would the American people find it impeachable just 11 months before an election? Would the Senate convict and remove Trump on such thin gruel?…”
STEPHEN KRUISER:
“…Climate Church theology is the only religion taught in American public schools. The proselytizing is working. The indoctrination mills are spewing out kids who are in the throes of despair because they’ve been taught that their futures will be full of pointless misery, all because their parents used the wrong kind of lightbulbs.
If the Climate Church succeeds in seizing all the government power that it lusts after and establishing its New Global Order, the Ayatollahs in Iran may end up seeming like some of the most cheerful and lenient world leaders.
Let’s all go buy old trucks and drive them a lot…”
CHARLIE MARTIN:
“…But now consider what happens if they do prepare Articles and have them actually voted out of the House. (Which isn’t actually a foregone conclusion given the polling.)
They have to go to trial in the Republican-dominated Senate. Where Eric Ciaramella can be called for public testimony under oath. Where Alex Vindman can be challenged by a former JAG about his violations of the UCMJ. Where people can be called to testify in public what they’ve said in the Star Chamber: that Ukraine never knew about aid being suspended, and that the president of Ukraine denies any pressure. And where House Members can’t be threatened with ethics complaints for asking inconvenient questions.
Where what already looks like a shady investigation of a made-up crime can’t be controlled.
My guess is that this will hang on until after Thanksgiving, especially if the ICIG report comes out. Then they will announce in high dudgeon that because of GOP obstruction and the risk to the (still “secret”) whistleblower, along with the proximity to the election, they can’t press on in the Senate where the evil Mitch McConnell will drag out the trial and thwart the will of the People.
They might even try to continue the “inquiry” into the New Year, although the risk grows every day that Republicans will start leaking seriously, or filing more ethics complains against the Democrats — or, of course, starting subpoenas in the Senate.
But an actual impeachment trial? They can’t risk it…”
JOSEF JOFFE:
“…Greta Thunberg, the teenager from Stockholm, is the prophet of a new religion sweeping the West. Call it Climatism. Like any religion worthy of the name, it comes with its own catechism (what to believe) and eschatology (how the world will end). Thunberg’s bible is the latest report of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which gives us 12 years to save civilization as we know it.
We have prayed to the false gods of fossil-fired growth, runs Thunberg’s indictment. Guilty are the adults who have “lied to us” and given us “false hope.” But her children’s crusade—no-school “Fridays for Future”—will show the path to redemption…
…For the believers, the debate is closed, and exhortation has segued into excommunication. No more catty humor, like that on display in the unforgettable bumper sticker from the 1970s: “Save the Planet! Kill yourself!” Those who reject the faith are “climate-change deniers,” as in “denying the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:23). Relate Climatism to Judeo-Christianity, and the psycho-structural analogies abound…
…Today, the harbingers of doom are armed with assumptions, models, and data. Melting ice will raise sea levels, swallowing coasts and islands. What the floods spare will be devastated by droughts or hurricanes. The most recent sign from up high is the darkened skies over the Amazon’s rain forests, the “lungs of the world,” which presages collective death by asphyxiation. For the first iteration of this threat, one need only go back to Revelation 6:13: “The sun became black, and the whole moon became as blood.”…
…if you “repent and believe” (Mark 1:15), Armageddon will yield to hope and salvation. But deliverance demands sacrifice, an idea going back to the earliest days of humanity. You could once expiate your sins by burying your baubles. Today, you must trade cars for bicycles. Stop gorging on meat whose production destroys forests and poisons the atmosphere with methane. Shrink your carbon footprint by using trains instead of planes. Ditch plastic in favor of hand-knitted shopping bags. Turn down the thermostat and pay a price for CO2 emissions. Such a levy makes economic sense by putting a market price on profligacy, but one can’t help recalling the indulgences condemned by another prophet, Martin Luther, in the 16th century…
…It is critical to keep fear and faith from dividing the world into disciples and heretics. “I am holier than thou” is not a compelling argument. If climate trumps civil conversation, the world will not become smarter. Inspired by Aristotle and David Hume, the philosopher of science Karl Popper wrote: “All theories are hypotheses; all can be overthrown. The game of science has no end. Those who decide that scientific propositions are final retire from the game,” leaving behind “pseudo-science or faith.”…”
